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sila: whoa!! that sure looks like fun! well done on participating and great job learning! hopefully you can…Hisham: Sure thing, Luke! Hope to see the birthday wish too if it’s possible.Luke: Hi, I would like to use one of ur photo to design a birthday wish for Sitiawan. I would put a credit …Hisham: Let’s just say “Canto Bight” was originally the name of some Tapani Sector noble’s pet duck.Edward: Or the city was named after the planet. Or they were both named after some forgotten dignitary. Weird…sila: glad that opah felt better though. hope she continues to feel healthy.sila: yay to a successful surgery! i hope you are recovering nicely. i’m imagining weird things with the s…Hisham: Thanks, chief. And yes I think your name is the longest we’ve ever had on here. Haha.

About

Hisham and Sila has been writing stuff down on this weblog since 2005. Sometimes they post photos of family, sometimes they talk about film, books and music, sometimes there is artwork and stuff about tabletop gaming.

Doug GMed Cubicle 7's Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG for Irfan and I for the first time and it was an enjoyable night. For Irfan this was the first time someone other than me was the gamemaster.

We played Fox and Olujimi just as they were stranded on the planet Klaris in the far future after hunting and failing to detain the big game hunter Breybrooke who was driven insane, corrupted by alien technology he had unearthed in Kenya in the year 1977.

Episode 01

Klaris

The game began as the duo was dining with their impromptu host Hermis, a Klarisian who served them haphis, a floating and slowly-spinning ball of edible mass that replenished itself as it was being scooped by cutlery. Olujimi thought it would taste more like cheese but it did not. Fox just ate away in silence.

Stranded on Klaris

City guards knocked on Hermis' door, and the guard leaded, a woman named Hollis, insisted that the newcomers who helped fight off Breybrooke be brought before their leaders. The guards were heavily hooded and gazed only at the floor. Hollis took them through the Klarisian city with domed buildings, columns and floating light globes. Olujimi and Fox were brought to a tall chamber with alien sculptures that floated and appeared to slightly move. Obus, a hooded man wearing elaborate robes and a tall collar awaited them there.

Irfan and I made player characters for Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space RPG. We might be playing the characters Doctor Simon Olujimi and Max Fox soon, game mastered by Doug.

Here is their backstory and how they came to be travelling with the Doctor:

Big game hunter Lord Percival Breybrooke was on a safari in the Kenyan jungle in 1977 when he was corrupted by alien tech that he had unwittingly unearthed. The alien tech grafted itself onto him and drove him insane. He went on a killing spree, shooting humans and animals with his arm-grafted energy weapon.

Doctor Olujimi was the one treating injured villagers. All of a sudden, a man mysteriously popped out of nowhere, with a burnt out wrist Vortex Manipulator. This temporal event somehow activated a similar time device on Lord Breybrooke's alien graft and he was shunted into another time in a burst of light. The newcomer had no memory of who he was, but he had a holocard on him that read, "Max Fox, Robot Mechanic" with the date "3027 A.D." written on the back. Even bereft of memory, Max repaired the Vortex Manipulator and discovered that it had only enough power for two additional jumps with two passengers. They decided to stop Lord Breybrooke together by chasing him through time. By using the Vortex Manipulator's time sensors to lock on to Breybrooke's temporal signature, they jumped back in time and cornered him 100 million years B.C., where he had been killing dinosaurs at random. But he escaped to the far future where he hunted alien citizens of an extrasolar planet named Klaris. Lord Breybrooke succeeded in escaping them once more, and the duo was stranded on this alien planet.

The TARDIS appeared. The Doctor then helped Fox and Olujimi with their immediate plight and took them as Companions. The Doctor realised that they were men out of time and wished to return them where they belong, but dangerous circumstances kept getting in their way... like Autons, Daleks and Cybermen (where Max Fox's Robot Mechanic skills were invaluable, again even though he was an amnesiac).

And they were still looking to thwart the time rogue Percival Breybrooke.

Last time on Eclipse Phase: Clouds of a Morning Star... the Gamera Security hypercorp gang was involved in several events, namely Cable played by Kai having a freefall date with Gretchen Ambelina of Pax Familae down through the lethal atmosphere of Venus, and Darren's AGI DANAI having to perform an impromptu psychosurgery on the other AGI Wandering Ina, played by Andrew.

But I was absent because of Eid vacation and stuff. In-character, Hokusai was busy setting up a new online ID and creating an art community site called the Digital Easel to boost his F-Rep and attempt intelligence gathering there. (Or is he?)

This week!

We were met by Captain Christoph de Beers an envoy from the Jovian Republic with military background, played by Matthew. Christoph's superior Ambassador Marie MacDonnoll will be attending the invitation-only Marquis d’Homem-Christos' art show, which will showcase the sculpture he acquired from the mysterious aliens called the Factors to be held at the ballroom of the Cumulus Hotel at the aerostat Aphrodite Prime.

Gamera Security was recommended by one Jovian Major Kate Stackhoff (from episode #somenumber which I did not participate in) back in Jupiter space, who noticed that Gamera matched the profile of another troubleshooter hypercorp she was familiar with named the Fastball Express. (All the forks all the time!)

I have been working on artwork for card prototypes for a card game entitled Salvage Ops by DWD Studios. The game allows players to take charge of four space salvage corporations. They play the cards to explore, encounter threats, retrieve salvagable gear (see my Google+ post here for samples of the gear) and win points.

Ivan and Kai of the GOKL gaming group dropped by to visit us for Aidilfitri.

The Aidilfitri visit is of course an excuse for some gaming shenanigans.

Once upon a time - about a month ago - I asked Kai if he knew where to get any Pacific Rim Heroclix figures. At the time, there was none in town. When his order from Noble Knight Games arrived, he offered to sell two figures so Irfan and I can play! The jaeger I picked was Gipsy Danger and the kaiju I picked was Knifehead. This game needs more jaegers and kaiju. A Tacit Ronin clix would be awesome.

But since a host of clix were arrayed on the dinner table, Kai taught Irfan to play.

Apart from Atok's car having clutch problems less than 10 klicks from reaching our place, there were no glitches during the visit. They picked up Irfan from school when my weekday exam schedule did not permit me to do so.

This big aquatic carnivorous reptile was seen swimming in the oceans of Tarnoonga used by pirates to dispose of unwanted guests, and also trying to eat said pirates who were not really smart to begin with. It spends its time in rocky caverns and crevices underwater

Upon arriving home from Pasir Mas after an overnight drive via Jeli, Gerik and Kuala Kangsar, I discovered this note from the post office right outside the door of the house.

So Irfan and I went to pick it up. It was a box and I was ecstatic at the size, shape and weight of it. Even if I was cautious about it. With my luck, it could have easily been some court summons because I'd accidentally strangled some duck to death 15 years ago or some weird thing like that.

In Eclipse Phase roleplaying game, I play the Neo-octopus Hokusai Tarnungshaut. Hokusai used to be in an uplifted octopus in an enhanced octomorph body.

Used to.

After his death by postal bomb, he was loaded into a worker pod morph. Later, he farcasted into an arachnoid morph on Venus and died again there. Without knowing he died there once, Hokusai farcasted again to Venus, this time in a slitheroid morph. This is what he looks like now.

Using the fake Mesh ID Heinrich Ausfahrt Plissken, he is now part of the Fastball Express contingent (using the Gamera Security hypercorp front) investigating stuff among the aerostat cities of Venus.

While on Venus, Hokusai - after being a freelance troubleshooter in Fastball Express for many months - has decided to go back into the public eye as an artist, but this time with another fake online persona, and perhaps an art studio hypercorp. He feels like being safe from the Nine Lives cartel has made him slack off as an artist. All his uploads into the art social Mesh sites have been uninspiring in the interim. Will this catch the attention of Nine Lives? Will this inspire Hokusai as an artist?

So on Yaya's fifth birthday, we went to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton as her birthday treat. We had originally thought about going to the zoo but the fact that it was a cold and rainy day (seriously? This has never happened in July to have a spring-like rainy day) forced a change of plans. However, it turned out to be an awesome experience, and since we are now members of the museum, we look forward to repeat trips there.

I love the above photo as you see how happy Adik is for his sister. Also contained in this entry are a few photos taken a week or so later when we had Yaya's birthday party. Vin and I were so busy running around on that day that we took maybe 5-6 photos in total. For the whole event. Craziness! So anyway, minimal chatter, just mostly photos.

So it seems we took way too many photos in July and there were a few with the kids together that I couldn't fit into either of the "usual" blog entries, and they were too cute to not post. So here it is. No stories, no information. Just some gratuitous pictures of the kids (and I snuck in some photos taken during Vin's birthday as well).